Reprogramming the mind to lose weight is a strategy that helps to keep focus on diet and physical activity on a regular basis, so that healthy eating and exercise become a natural habit in everyday life, which favors maintenance of the appropriate weight for longer, avoiding the known accordion effect.
To reprogram the mind, it is necessary to identify bad habits and exchange them for a healthier routine, but also to be pleasurable, because only then will healthy habits truly remain.
So here are 7 tips to help with this mental reprogramming process:
1. Believe that you are able
Really believing that you are able to lose weight and change your lifestyle is necessary to leave the brain predisposed to face the difficulties and fight harder to get the dream you want.
On the other hand, imagining that it will be just another frustrated diet attempt, the brain is already getting used to and accepting defeat, not fighting enough to win.
2. Avoid weighing yourself every day
If weighing every day generates a constant anxiety by the result of the scale, that does not differentiate, for example, if gain or the loss of weight were of fat or lean mass. In addition, one or more bad results on the scale can influence a complete withdrawal from eating and healthy routine, generating a new cycle of weight gain.
Thus, it is advised that the weighing should be done at most once a week, but at least once every two months, to monitor the gain or loss of body weight.
3. Perform psychological counseling
Tracking with a psychologist helps you understand why uncontrolled eating and excessive weight gain can often be consequences of problems in childhood or with relationships.
Psychological support develops a greater capacity to deal with emotions and helps build new healthy habits in place of bad habits, such as drinking too much alcohol, fast foods and soft drinks.
4. Recall and value each achievement
Valuing and maintaining focus on each achievement, even if small, creates a domino effect of motivation that increases the frequency of good achievements and better results. Thus, on days when the diet is fulfilled, but not physical activity, for example, one should try to focus on the positive side of having followed the diet well rather than the training failure.
However, in spite of having to value each achievement, it is also important to make the commitment to try to perform again the next day that part that ended in failure or frustration, because that way the spirit of conquest and of overcoming is maintained.
5. Do not focus only on appearance
During physical activity, for example, it is important to focus on the sense of pleasure and mission accomplished that the exercise brings, not just the appearance still unwanted in the mirror.
Remember that doing well with diet and training brings a good feeling to the body, helps to keep positive choices with greater ease, because good memories give rise to the desire to repeat that action and, after some time, this repetition will become a habit.
6. Practice new patterns of behavior
It is natural for the brain to like routines and to create patterns of habits for actions that repeat themselves frequently and that bring a sense of pleasure or conquest. However, care must be taken because the brain also creates automatic repetition patterns for actions that are unhealthy, such as overeating and being too lazy to exercise.
Thus, it is important to start dieting and physical activity having the determination to correctly follow what has been planned for at least a few weeks, because the longer an action is repeated, the more it becomes automatic for the brain and the easier it will be for maintain it as a natural habit of daily routine.
7. Establish real goals
Establishing real goals is important to generate a cycle of small wins, which together will bring more stimulation and determination to achieve the ultimate goal. On the other hand, in setting very difficult goals, the feelings of defeat and failure become more constant, bringing the feeling of incapacity and the will to give up.
Talking with professionals such as nutritionist and physical educator is a good strategy to plan real goals and ease the path of achievement.
See tips on how to change fat thinking to focus the food.
